1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the synthesis of simulation models, and more particularly, to techniques for inferring missing information in a functional model, to better map functional basis elementary functions to simulation components.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Product development, from basic consumer products to complex systems, is facing an unprecedented level of complexity due to the interactions among hundreds to millions of heterogeneous components, tight time-to-market and budget, need for innovation and new services, safety and environmental regulations, and consumer requirements. Although systems engineering methodologies facilitate the intensive cross-domain collaboration in temporally and geographically distributed teams to create better performing products, the main bottleneck in cyber-physical systems (CPS) design still is the difficulty of realizing concurrent engineering where the tasks that occur at the various stages of product development are overlapped in time to reduce errors, cost, and time.
A CPS is a heterogeneous and/or hybrid system that can be geographically distributed and/or integrated within a single form factor to perform control functionality in software to actuate and/or manipulate a physical, chemical, or biological process. In such a system, modern high speed communication plays an important role for integrating the subsystems. As opposed to the traditional mechanical-centric approach where software and control are an afterthought or a last minute effort, an integrated CPS product development relies on cross-discipline modeling and early identification of system-level problems to provide a highly flexible and less expensive approach for creating innovative and truly integrated CPS. Currently, as observed by researchers and practitioners, the main limiting factor in complex industrial CPS development is the lack of tools to support the early concept design phase. It has been estimated that 70-80% of the cost of a product is determined by the decisions taken at that phase. Presently disclosed is a general method and a tool to improve the current practice of early concept CPS design of complex industrial systems including machine tools and robotics, transportation, energy, manufacturing, and nano-/micro-scale implantable medical devices.
Modeling and simulation have become standard practice in the development of complex systems because it is an economical and effective way to design, validate, and test complex systems. Products can be virtually explored and analyzed before they exist in reality because software is used to estimate the dynamic behavior of the system under a large variety of conditions. This, in principle, enables the early identification of system-level problems.